I do not do well with parties. This is a known fact about me. Actually, I correct myself, I have gotten to the point where I am comfortable enough with large parties (they are surprisingly easy to hide in) , but small ones? Where people can see me? Especially very important people? No, so not for me. When I went through the process of gaining permission to attend the shore-side gala at Ephesus I had done so with the anticipation of being part of the large group that was due to depart at 6pm. Being over organized and anticipatory however…I showed up early at the pick-up point, fully prepared to just people watch until everyone else showed up…
And somehow ended up being scooped onto a bus with the high ranking mariners – who were heading to the site early for their private cocktail party – and the officers; I swear I do not know how this happened. I swear I was just standing there waiting! And then the Hotel Director was scooping me up onto a bus!
So instead of being part of a milling throng of about a thousand that would have rendered me neatly invisible , I was part of a very small crowd of very important people (the guests of honour at the private cocktail party? Included the CEO of the whole company).
Needless to say I felt more than slightly awkward, and I did not last long! After I’d been seen and made my very brief round of hellos, I…disappeared.
You see, it was still light out at this point, so the rest of the site was not closed off yet. So there were lots of places to disappear to.
Forget the CEO, forget the food, forget the wine and the amazing orchestral performance that would come later in the evening. This was the highlight.
Ephesus empty. So empty that I could hear my footsteps on the pitted marble streets. Could hear birdsong, could almost hear my own heartbeat as it slowed from awkward panic to something resembling normal.
Only the distant sound of the strings trio playing for the VIPs that I was doing my best to avoid, gave any indication that I wasn’t the only living soul in a once thriving city.
And the first touches of the sunset were just starting to brush the sky.
I could quite happily have stayed there forever.
It was the gradual silencing of the trio that made me realize the cocktail party was over and everyone was starting to make their way towards the main courtyard where they were serving dinner. I joined everyone for food ,feeling much more at east now that the rest of the guests were on site (hiding in a crowd really is remarkably easy) and then I shouldered m bag, pocketed my camera, and head back towards the great library for the pictures you simply never think you’ll have the chance to get.
Y’see – just for us – they lit the façade of the Library. Something you usually only see in postcards.
Pure, sheer, magic.
The world simply drops away – there is only that building, only that place. It’s history, it’s very soul.
Walking into the hollow shell, almost alone, ou can almost believe that you hear the rustling of long vanished parchment.
This…this is my church.
At just past 8 everyone made their slow careful, flash-lit way to the vast expanse of the ancient amphitheater; collected embossed programmes, and took places on the stones seats that are thousands of years old. Over 1,000 of us came nowhere near to filling the place. Only a handful of us braved the delicious solitude of the topmost row of the first section, and even then the seats of the second tier stretched high and empty behind us. Void of even candles.
Once men of God preached unaided and un-amplified to crowds of thousands here, passion plays taught their lessons to the masses. All long before the age of microphones and artificial volume.
But it has been over a decade since any sound but the chatter of tourist and the clacking of cameras echoed off these ancient walls.
Until tonight when the stones sung with the rising strains of Vivaldi, Mozart and Bach as the Aegean Chamber Orchestra provided the pinnacle to an already breathtaking evening.
I will admit to oft times preferring big band or old time rock n’roll to classical (mostly due to my own ignorance of the genre), but this was one of the few times I’ve been able to understand why my Mum says that well played classical music is like therapy for your brain. It slots everything into place.
It was as if we were in a whole different world.
Transported for just a few (granted, chilly, it was outdoors after all) hours, to a world where there were no gripes or complaints or petty disputes.
That’s why the world needs music really. It’s a universal language., and in contexts like this it becomes even more so.
Once a season, we pull of a miracle and create magic on this ship…
This year…this year…I think we managed it more than ever.
Perhaps because in these troubled times, the world needs magic more than ever…
And heaven knows every little bit helps…